The present embodiments relate to ultrasound imaging. In particular, power savings are provided for ultrasound systems.
Ultrasound systems use power to acoustically scan and process the resulting data. For environmental reasons, reducing power is beneficial. Reducing power is more imperative in a portable and/or battery powered ultrasound system.
Ultrasound systems may use a timeout to save power. Once the ultrasound system has ceased interacting with the system, a timer begins. Upon expiration of a time limit, the ultrasound system is placed into a screen saver mode, ceases transmitting, and/or enters a standby (e.g., sleep) mode where scanning ceases. The user must revive the ultrasound system from the standby mode to resume scanning again. The revival may take a frustrating amount of time. The ceasing transmitting or screen saver mode where the time limit is short may cause interruption when undesired.
Proposals have been made to reduce power while still providing for scanning. For example, a transmit voltage is reduced due to detection of user inactivity. As another example, various scanning parameters and use of electronics are changed to reduce power while still producing diagnostic images. However, these changes assume power consumption distribution in a manner that may not be accurate.